During her fiery address to the PDM supporters in front of the entrance to the Supreme Court, Maryam issued a threat and a choice to the Chief Justice – the head of an important pillar of the state – “resign and go home”, sending a clear signal to the Supreme Court to refrain from pursuing contempt of court proceedings against the government or legislatures for defying its ruling to hold elections on 14th May, which has already passed.
By doing so, Maryam honoured her promise and oath when, a month ago, she defied the SC to declare that no matter what you do, elections will not be held on May 14. The promise was kept in front of a large number of PDM supporters who attended the public meeting held in flagrant violation of section 144. The purpose of the meeting was to both commemorate the defiance of supreme court orders and to threaten the court with the combined wrath of the executive, legislatures, and PDM parties, which enjoy unwavering establishment support. Once more, the government and legislatures’ two-pronged assault on the country’s judiciary and lone opposition leader accomplished all of its intended goals.
Maryam was once again well-prepared, articulate, composed, and impassioned. As usual, she was fearless, brave, and oblivious to the threat or consequences of her bold, aggressive, fiery speech, which targeted the Chief Justice of the country though aided, supported, and facilitated by the police and other law enforcing agencies and the establishment. The administrations had set the entire stage and all modes of facilitation in position in the morning.
A few non-committal police contingents were dispatched to stage a mock resistance, and a mock gate was erected with no lock, enabling the workers of JUI to climb over and open the unlocked gate with ease and comfort and enter the constitutional avenue, and conquer it without any resistance, in blatant violation of section 144. We can imagine what would have occurred to Imran Khan and his supporters if he had chosen the red zone as the location for his public rally.
She climbed the stage at 2 p.m. in sweltering heat wearing the most appropriate dress with a dupatta on her head that never ventured to slip, and when she began speaking, she was brilliant from beginning to end. Her speech, which bombarded Imran and PTI with high-caliber cannon fire, targeted the judiciary without sparing it any indignity or insult, taunting and blaming the establishment for creating Frankenstein, and concluding with a demand for the resignation of Chief Justice Umer Atta Bandial. She asked the audience of thousands to support her demand, which they did gleefully in front of the Supreme Court’s own building, in complete disregard for any potential repercussions or fear.
While Maryam was making lethal and vitriolic attacks in a public meeting attended by thousands of PDM workers, Bilawal was firing cannons in parliament, labelling the chief justice a militant like Imran Khan and accusing him of aiding and abetting a terrorist like Imran Khan. Both speeches were precisely timed, posing enormous professional and technical challenges for the media, who had to be on their toes to balance the speeches of both leaders, delay them, and detect portions of the speeches laced with lethal attacks against the judiciary and the establishment.
They were tasked with using all of their technical and professional expertise to detect obvious and derogatory assaults made against the supreme court and the army, as well as synchronise the timing to ensure that both speeches were given equal time and importance.
It was also possibly the first time in the history of the country that all political parties that had been competing against each other since the country’s inception, opposing, insulting, and undermining each other with all their might had united against a lone novice in the political arena who had won only one seat in the parliament only a few years prior, but had since become a formidable threat to the legacy-based political parties and the establishment.
Establishment, which initially fell in love with him, helped him gain political capital by hook or by crook in an effort to break the political inertia created by the two legacy-based political parties, and then put their mighty weight and their resources into making him the Prime Minister of the country in the hope that in exchange for the undivided support, he will remain grateful and obedient to them to carryforward their hidden and open agendas and will protect their vested interests. Four years later, they realised that their experiment had deformed, become perilously lethal, and was out of control, and it was time to abort it in order to save themselves and the country from further damage.
But to their utter surprise, the experiment, which they believed to have been terminated effectively like all previous experiments, not only survived and had successfully escaped, but was also able to find refuge among the people. Realising their grave error, they attempted to eliminate him physically, but he eluded them again when the shooter missed his shot, which instead of shattering the cranium, fractured the leg.
Maryam Nawaz used the ISPR press conference and Imran’s remarks to ridicule the armed forces, alluding to Imran Khan’s suggestion that ISPR launch its own political party and stating that the armed forces are at a loss as to how to eliminate the political party that they created but which turned against them. Then, she used the 9th May attack on the military establishment by protestors to ignite and inflame the anger and sentiments of the armed forces against Imran Khan, painting a picture in which Imran had pre-planned the attack on the military headquarters, Corps Commander House, and destroyed the displayed jet fighters.
She blamed that the establishment created the creature to destroy the PMN(N) and PPP and its leadership from the country’s politics, but the monster has now become its creator’s greatest threat. She went on to say that, in anticipation of his arrest, Imran planned attacks on the army symbol of power in Rawalpindi and all other symbols of power displayed throughout the country in order to threaten, subjugate, and humiliate the armed forces.
She also referred to Imran’s statements as a threat to the armed forces for even larger attacks if they attempt to arrest him in the future. In the same tone, she ridiculed ISPR and, by extension, the establishment for masterminding the ouster of Nawaz Sharif by gathering evidence of corruption and then using the judiciary to ban him for life from active politics. She stated that the establishment now realises the grave error it made when it initially supported Imran to conduct a sit-in in the red zone in 2014 and then used brute force, the judiciary, the media, and the management of politics and engineering in elections to help him attain power.
She also made it implicitly clear that Imran has disregarded all political parties as a threat to his popularity or an obstacle to his ascent to power, identifying only the establishment, which was hell-bent on eliminating him in any way possible. During Imran’s four-year reign, no one else was able to sense the full force of the brute power emanating from Rawalpindi or realize the impotence of political forces, including his. This lends credence to her argument. He continues to believe that the current order will collapse like a house of cards if the establishment withdraws its support. Rightly or wrongly, all of his political weaponry are directed against the establishment and not against the PDM, the government, or the legislature.
Various communications and actions emanating from Rawalpindi appear to have strengthened his viewpoint. Immediately after the fall of the government, the ISPR stated in a press conference that the regime change was good for the country, citing the rise in the stock market and the appreciation of the rupee against the dollar. However, neither of these indicators used to prove the success of the regime change survived even a week before they began their free fall, proving the opposite conclusion. During a later joint press conference, the DG.ISI and DG.ISPR used all of their persuasive power to demonstrate that Imran Khan was playing a double game by promising one thing while doing the contrary.
The establishment’s attempts to suppress pro-PTI voices in traditional and social media provided Imran with additional evidence of the adversarial positioning of the armed forces. The failed attempt on his life, using rangers and NAB to arrest him by circumventing normal judicial procedures, and latest press conference which only targeted Imran khan and PTI followed by arrest of PTI’s entire leaders and supporters provided sufficient evidence to reaffirm Imran Khan’s belief that the army is his only enemy, which is not only regrettable but also extremely deplorable.
Her speech culminated with derogatory name-calling of the chief justice as a form of personal assault. She described him as a protector of looters of Al Qadir Trust’s property worth billions, as well as an abettor and supporter of Imran Khan, whom she deemed a terrorist, and a supporter of his party, the PTI, which she termed a fascist and militant organisation, her arguments make Chief justice unwanted and unnecessary greeting, “Nice to see you” as the most lethal charge of CJ’s impartiality.
I was watching with my wife when the media reported that the Chief Justice greeted him with “nice to see you” and bid him farewell when he departed for a resthouse instead of jail in a luxurious Mercedes Benz rather than a prisoner’s van. As a member of the media, I promptly informed my wife that the chief justice had made a grave error, for which he will now pay dearly due to his inability to control his personal feelings towards Imran Khan. The fact that his few but lethal remarks are being used to portray his partiality and personal preference for Imran Khan has made his actions and decisions extremely controversial.
Maryam used these few words to ridicule the chief justice, stating that the chief justice himself committed the greatest court contempt by aiding and abetting a thief, criminal, and terrorist. She stated that her demand for equalizing the scales of justice has been fully vindicated by the court’s decision to award a lifelong ban to a popular leader on the basis of trivial, frivolous, and unproven charges while granting a lifetime bail to a political leader who was a proven thief, looter, and terrorist. She swore that she would not rest until both sides of the scale of justice were made parallel and equal.
Her strategy to intimidate the judiciary has been successful thus far. Instead of initiating contempt of court proceedings, the court began hearing the review petition and postponed the hearing by one week, granting the executive, legislatures, and PDM their first significant victory against the judiciary and Imran Khan.
In his eagerness to surpass Maryam in denigrating and degrading the Supreme Court, Bilawal Butto went so far as to equate the Chief Justice with terrorist and supporters and abettor of terrorist organization. He stated that his party is not against elections in principle, but that the dissolution of the Punjab Assembly before the national assembly was the worst form of conspiracy against democracy and the constitution. According to him, Bajawa, Imran, and Parvez Elahi were the masterminds of the deadly plot, which was intended to win the Punjab election and leverage this to win elections in the entire country, declare one unit to impose one-man rule, and there is one-man rule in the army.
The conclusion to be drawn from this staged event is that the government is in shambles, the economy is in a dire state, the agreement with the IMF is now impossible because the government is likely to cease pursuing the agreement, and a populist budget will be presented as pre-election rigging. The legislature without its essential component, the opposition; has been reduced to an extension of the executive.
The judiciary has been fragmented, disjointed, and harmed, and its current form is unrecognizable. The establishment is discredited because of its failed experiments and its incapacity to maintain its image and respect among the populace. Yes, I believe we are equally able to find the space to fall further instead of aspiring to improve ourselves. (Edited by Khadijah Kamili)
Opinions in this piece are based on personal observations of the writer.
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